Ethnicity Guambiano (Misak) Language family BarbacoanCoconuco | Native speakers 21,000 (2008) | |
ISO 639-3 Either:gum – Guambianottk – Totoró | ||
Coconuco a.k.a. Guambiano is a dialect cluster of Colombia spoken by the Guambiano indigenous people. Though the three varieties, Guambiano, moribund Totoró, and the extinct Coconuco, are traditionally called languages, Adelaar & Muysken (2004) believe that they are best treated as a single language.
Totoro may be extinct; it had 4 speakers in 1998 out of an ethnic population of 4,000. Guambiano, on the other hand, is vibrant and growing.
Coconucan was for a time mistakenly included in a spurious Paezan language family, due to a purported "Moguex" (Guambiano) vocabulary that turned out to be a mix of Páez and Guambiano (Curnow 1998).
Phonology
The Guambiano inventory is as follows (Curnow & Liddicoat 1998:386).
References
Coconucan language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA